a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Game 72 – In how many ways can we collapse? Let me count the ways…

Up by 21 in the 3rd, the Jazz closed up shop for the night. What’s worse–if they consciously decided to close up shop for the night, or didn’t notice that they were turning out the lights and locking the door? By the time they realized what was going on, they were down 7 and there were only 2 minutes left. DWill awoke and turned on the ninja, hitting two shots with 0:25 and 0:13 left to tie the game, but wasn’t able to connect on the one he threw up at the buzzer.

Overtime. DWill hit a bunch of FTs and AK [inadvertently, I think] connected on a huge, huge, huge 3 and got the and-1 to carry the boys to a W.

They pulled it out in the end, but let’s face it–good teams just don’t let things like that happen. Anyone that talks about us being a contender is just fooling himself. It doesn’t matter that there are ten games left for them to “figure it out” and “see where we are.” If they haven’t got it by now, nothing’s going to change in the next two weeks. I also submit that same argument, with “in the next two weeks” being replaced by “ever,” to describe CJ’s future with the Utah Jazz.

Totally random observation-question:

Why were AK, KK, and CJ sporting different colored arm braces?

I was listening to the post-game and one of the people that called in said that AK spent the entire halftime sitting on the bench by himself with his head in his hands. Anyone else hear/see this? That can’t be good. He played the most minutes he has since coming back from injury, but never really seemed to get into the flow. I stand by what I said in my last post though: if we are to have a chance in advancing to/in the Playoffs, we need AK to be on his game.

As for Boozer, he had this to say about not playing in the final minutes of close games:

“Obviously I am a warrior and a warrior wants to be in the battle so I want to be in there. But coach coaches the game and I play the game, but you know I want to be in there and I think I can help our team win in every situation no matter what it is. I’ve been that kind of player my whole career and that is the kind of player I am.”

Everything I disagree with him about aside, the facts speak for themselves. The Jazz outscored by Suns by 11 after Boozer was subbed out in the 2nd quarter. In the 4th, the Suns went on a 30-13 run and turned the Jazz’s 11-point lead into a 6-point deficit in the ten minutes that Boozer was in. With Sap in, the Jazz went on an 8-2 run in the final 2:02 to tie the game and outscored the Suns 14-9 in OT to win the game. Boozer wants to be out there, but his being out there doesn’t benefit the Jazz (I’ll be nice) at this point in time, given his not-100%ness.

Finally, happy birthday to Jerry and congrats to Ronnie P and wife on their new daughter.